The Doomsday Clock is an internationally recognized design that conveys how close we are to destroying our civilization with dangerous technologies of our own making. First and foremost among these are nuclear weapons, but the dangers include climate-changing technologies, emerging... Read More

With more than 4,000 people falling ill since 2007, the Netherlands is experiencing one of the world's worst outbreaks of Q fever. A zoonotic disease (meaning it can be transmitted from animals to people), Q fever can cause sickness and even death in humans. The Dutch struggle to address the ongoing outbreak can be instructive in terms of how to improve the handling of public health crises, and the rest of the world would do well to learn from their experience.

Since the middle of the twentieth century, more than 330 novel infectious diseases have emerged in human populations. The majority of these new diseases spread from animals to humans--take, for example, HIV/AIDS, SARS, and bovine spongiform encephalopathy (commonly known as "mad cow disease," or BSE). Some political leaders chose to respond to these dangerous diseases by ignoring or downplaying the problem. Others consulted scientific and medical experts in order to make informed decisions to combat the threats.

The concept of "meta leaders"--individuals who make decisions beyond their official lines of authority in order to facilitate collaborations across jurisdictions and agencies--was proposed in an effort to overcome the silo thinking that characterizes how traditional government leaders carry out their roles. Since then, meetings and summits have promoted the concept of "meta leadership" among business, government, and nonprofit sectors.

Max Weber, the noted German sociologist of the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century, wrote that an inherent conflict exists between political and bureaucratic leaders. Political leaders strive to get reelected and implement their ideologically based policies while bureaucratic leaders aim to perpetuate and expand their bureaucracies.

As the swine flu crisis worsens, effective disease control will require political and public health leadership at the federal, state, and local levels. Like the deadly influenza virus of 1918 that took more lives than World War I, this latest virus is an H1N1 strain and has the potential to develop into a major pandemic. Already, the virus has infected more than 150 people in Mexico and has spread to New York City and other parts of the United States.